ChatGPT is testing an enhanced shopping feature that includes checkout, Amazon is launching its AI agent Rufus, and Shopify is blocking its platform for AI bots. What we are witnessing these days is more of a revolution than an evolution, not least because of the rapid pace of change.

That's why Ingrid and Valerie are joined by AI expert Stefan Wenzel in this episode to take a look at the future. They talk about why the new e-commerce is no longer commerce, but a software protocol in which systems communicate with systems. They shed light on why brands will have to sell to machines in the future, why Retail Media 1.0 has had its day, and how the necessary visibility can be achieved. They also discuss why the battle for the customer interface has reignited and why Amazon could be left behind. And who could monetize customer access in the future.  

Note from the sponsor eBay:

On Friday, September 25, 2025, eBay OPEN is coming back to Germany. After a two-year hiatus, this great family reunion of eBay sellers is returning to Berlin, at BrewDog DogTap in Marienpark. Look forward to the complete eBay experience: great keynotes – including a strategic outlook from Saskia Meier-Andrae, CEO of eBay Germany – insights into AI and Gen Z trends at the highest level, and plenty of networking opportunities. And it's also a celebration – eBay is turning 30, so it's part conference, part festival. Ingrid will be there in person because she is on the jury of the eBay Awards for the sixth time in a row, which honors the best sellers in Germany. Secure your ticket now: https://www.visitberlin.de/en/event/ebay-open-2025  

Note from the sponsor bol:

Bol has established itself as a local hero in the Netherlands and Belgium and has become the market leader in the region thanks to a clear focus on customer satisfaction and innovation. As a generalist marketplace, it offers more than 42 million products in 28 categories and access to more than 13 million customers. This also makes bol attractive for retailers from neighboring countries. If you want to know more about bol, don’t miss the upcoming webinar: “Start Selling on bol Marketplace – Faster, Easier, Smarter” on September 23rd. Patricia Lay, Partnership Growth Manager at bol, and Hassan Imran, E-Commerce Manager at Neudorff Performances will share how international brands can successfully sell on bol and what it takes to get started. Register right now here! https://zoom.us/webinar/register/5917532143442/WN_Ma7kmG-TRQa8RQ_Dppb4Ew#/registration

Takeaways:

• The emergence of AI shopping agents signifies a profound transformation in e-commerce, moving from traditional commerce to a system where machines engage in transactions on behalf of users.
• Retail Media 1.0 is becoming obsolete, as the new paradigm demands brands to adapt to a landscape where visibility hinges on their ability to engage with AI-driven interfaces.
• The competition for consumer interaction has intensified, with major platforms like Amazon and ChatGPT vying for dominance in delivering a seamless shopping experience.
• Brands must recognize that future customer engagement will increasingly involve selling to AI agents, necessitating a reevaluation of marketing strategies and customer interactions.
• The evolution of commerce as a software protocol suggests that direct human-to-brand interactions will diminish, giving rise to system-to-system communications that redefine the shopping experience.
• Data has become the currency of the new e-commerce landscape, compelling brands to leverage high-quality content and product information to maintain relevance in AI-driven search results.

And of course, on the flip side, you have, you know, marketplaces such as Amazon and others who now look at this and say, jesus, you know, there's someone eating aggressively into my direct interface with the user. So what can I do?

Let's Talk Marketplace.

The Marketplace podcast with Ingrid Lommer and Valerie Dichtl.

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to let's Talk Marketplace. I'm Ingrid. I'm glad you tuned into the first of our summer Deep Dive episodes.

And today we will be talking about, let's say, the elephant in the room, agentic commerce. There's been a lot of talk in the last weeks.

Amazon has been pushing its AI bot buy for me, and ChatGPT is secretly trying out shopping features and including payment solutions drive directly into the chat interface. And Shopify is desperately trying to shut out AI bots from their stores. So, yeah, lots of things going on.

I think it's high time for a deep dive into agent E commerce, don't you think, Valerie?

Yeah, I fully agree and I'm really happy that we have just the right person with us to discuss these matters today. And this is German e commerce evangelist and fellow podcast host Stefan Wenzel. Welcome back, Stefan. Great to have you back on the show.

Thanks for having me. Hello.

Yeah, welcome back for me as well, Stefan.

And what a great timing for our recording, I think, because I asked you to be our guest and talk about AI commerce, I think, at end of June, so shortly after your keynote for the K5 conference in Berlin.

And there you predicted that because of the rise of AI shopping agents, and I quote, the classic online shop of today will turn into the vanilla LP of tomorrow. So something cherished and well loved by a select number of shopping connoisseurs, but mostly irrelevant for the main bulk of E commerce turnover.

What a great line, by the way. And here we are just a month later and. Yeah, and things are getting, I don't know, out of control, I think. So, yeah.

What we record today, this record today, what you record today, will go live in three weeks. So what do you think will have happened until then?

The world will have changed again. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's.

And I fully sympathize with everybody that, that, you know, reacted strongly, you know, how dare he to call our online shops, you know, some, some, you know, historic informat.

You got some strong reactions, I guess.

Oh, yeah, I did, I did. And I didn't mean to be mean.

You know, when you look at the data and you look at the development of traffic, humans against bots and then the differentiate out the normal bots, the pricing scrapers and so forth and you differentiate out the AI agents.

Then you clearly see and of course there are different data sources and it depends on who models what and what have you but broad brush you see that there is a rise of traffic share from the so called AI agents and you know the natural development will be that this takes over from humans, you know and just look at your own behavior when you search for something on the on the Internet. You used to do this on Google, didn't you? And now you observe yourself more open more often to do it on, you know, chatgpt or Perplexity and others.

But even when you are still in case you are still using Google Google you will no longer click through as much as you used to do because you get the AI overview on top of the page. So AI answers all the questions that you may have had gone are the days of, you know, providing hyperlinks.

As a result you get the answer and therefore traffic will change and this has a fundamental change or impact on our industry.

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Can already see this is going to be a hot episode today.

Yeah.

And we'll get into that right after a very short break.

When you look at marketplaces in the Netherlands, the first things that catches your eye is Boel.

Bol has established itself as a local hero in the Netherlands and Belgium and has become the market leader in the region thanks to a clear focus on customer satisfaction and innovation.

As a generalist marketplace, it offers more than 42 million products in 28 categories and access to more than 13 million customers. This also makes Boel attractive for retailers from neighboring countries.

Boel supports them with personal assistance like direct support and customized solutions for new retailers as well as local know how about regional customer needs.

Want to know more about Bole? Then don't miss my upcoming webinar. Start selling on Bole Marketplace. Faster, easier, smarter.

On September 23, Patri Cial, partnership growth manager at Boel will be joined by Hassan Imran, e commerce manager at Neudorf Performances, the digital unit of Neudorf, a German heritage brand known for sustainable gardening products. Together they share how international brands can successfully sell on Bole and what it takes to get started. Register now.

You'll find the link in the show notes.

Well, to start as the first question of all because you are like talking about identity commerce as everyone knows what it is, maybe we should first clarify what what is this exactly what you're talking about.

Yeah, that's a good point actually. And I think that's kind of the golden thread throughout, you know, most of the AI stuff everybody assumes everybody else knows.

Yeah.

Including themselves. I mean, who dares to say I know?

I mean, in short, I think the simple way to look at it is, you know, small, cute little bots are sent off by technology to do stuff for you. That's kind of what an agent is, right? It's software that does things on your behalf.

And the one who sends the small supporter, your personal assistant, if you will, your little agent, the one who sends it off, is the one who owns the relationship to the user.

So if you are a user of ChatGPT, and you use ChatGPT and you send off the ChatGPT shopping bot, the AI bot, then that piece of software goes off, wanders off the web and does things for you. And that may be anything and everything. So find information, you know, seek clarification on questions you may have.

But it may also include to do a, include to do a transaction. So, and that's not a small change because we used to think of commerce as a place you go.

And this now changes into commerce as a protocol because no longer does a human user visit a domain, a URL or an app. No, a piece of software seeks conversation, communication with your shopping platform.

So it's actually two systems talking to each other, one on behalf of the user, and the other one is, you know, an institution formerly known as the retailer or the marketplace or the brand. So commerce as a protocol, it's, it's, it's stuff isn't sold on a site or a domain. It is sold through a system.

So it's system to system communication. And that's where I think people kind of lose it a bit because all of a sudden we're looking at basically two versions of the web.

One is the ones where humans still browse websites.

And that's obviously still happening, but now more often and increasing rapidly, you have those pieces of software, those small agents, and it's nothing cute about it, I just make it sound cute, but I mean, it's just software doing things on behalf of users. No human entering your domain at all.

To follow up on that. What is the potential here?

Because you said in the beginning that, okay, more and more people are using AI for all sorts of things, and so using them for commerce is just the next step. But what I often realize is when I talk to classic E commerce people, that they sort of deny the, yeah, the real threat of this.

Saying things like, yeah, people use AI to, to browse or Maybe to research, but wouldn't buy on an on chapter, would they? What do you think about that?

Well, I mean, let me tell you one thing. If, if, if there is anything we can rely on, it is that humans love solutions that remove friction or increase convenience.

I mean that's what we just love. I mean, why else did marketplaces thrive over the last 15 years? I mean, why are marketplaces the number one formula in E commerce?

Because they took out a lot of friction from what was formerly in that process called E commerce.

And of course, if you know those, say, chatbots, however you want to call them, those AI platforms once they start to be convenient enough because they're your one go to destination for all problems questions you may have. Believe you me, we will all pivot quite quickly to where we save energy and efforts and time. And time. Exactly.

So I would be really cautious and watch this very closely. My, my gut feeling is, you know, it take, it took us, I don't know, 15 years to see E commerce coming from literally nowhere to approximately 20%.

I think we're now seeing something similar in AI agent context within, I would say more than five years. Ish.

You know, I would say it's, it's a very, you know, compromised or you know, aggregated version, accelerated version of what we saw with digital E commerce overall. So people will absolutely use it. And when you look at the first AI based browsers like dia, for example, I mean you need to check this stuff out.

People who listen to this podcast and feel a bit hands off, just download this stuff, just play around with it, just experience it yourself.

If you download a browser like dia, you will see how AI first web browsing looks like and you open several tabs and you can tell the browser to do things, you know, across the tabs that you have open. So research something in Tab 1, which may be a recipe you want to cook in the evening.

And then tab two is your favorite supermarket, online supermarket, and tab three is a competitor.

And then that agent within your browser, you just tell that agent to now wander off and purchase the ingredients from the recipe in the other two open tabs from the supermarkets, compare prices, choose the cheaper one, choose the best delivery option option, put it in a basket and even check out and place the order. I mean this is so you don't have to go to any of those websites anymore. Type in again your whole, you know, user data and everything, your address.

No, it's all done on your behalf. And for you, I mean this, this is a compelling proposition. As soon as it's work as it works reliably. And this is still early days.

I'm not saying it's all perfect yet, but it's, it's evolving and improving rapidly.

I would say, as far as we can see. Now Amazon does the other way around, right? They have like their commerce platform where all the products are already online.

And now they invented Rufus where you can, like where you have the IJ agent next to the search field where you can type and say like, hey, I want to buy like, I don't know, the new sports shoes from Brooks in I don't know, size, whatever, can you give me all the results about it and with the best price and there you have it already integrated, right.

On the other hand, you have ChatGPT where you can still right now ask for like, hey, I need a brand which is suiting like this and this and this what I want to have. And then please give me the names or the website addresses.

And I think it's like, just like, I don't know, a glimpse of time till we find, till we can say like, okay, and see, I need size. This, where is the size still available to the best price and give me the link and then I can buy it, right?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean you have basically. I mean everybody tries to own the direct contact with the consumer. I mean that's, I mean that's nothing new, right?

I mean we've seen that battle for decades. So that battle intensified. Now everybody wants to own the AI, interface with the consumer, with the user.

So you have the ChatGPT and OpenAI's and you know, Gemini's, Google's of this world who. And they do an awful amount of activity to become that starting point of your, let's say, browse behavior.

And they are obviously investing heavily into becoming a browser because by definition that's how you browse the web. So they want to be the tool you use to browse the web.

And once you start to see enough benefits in their browser, they own your browsing and they can use their technology to support everything that you need in support of your session.

And of course on the flip side, you have, you know, marketplaces such as Amazon and others who now look at this and say, Jesus, you know, there's someone eating aggressively into my direct interface with the user. So, so what can I do? And now they use the same technology or their, their own version of it, and they try to solve for the same problem.

So if you are on Amazon and you may find a gap in the assortment Hard to believe that that's possible, but it is.

So imagine there is a gap in the assortment then now Amazon sends off their own agent who then places an order on your behalf on a third party website. Which is of course mind blowing when you consider where we come from. Right, so, so now you know, they generate revenue on third party websites. Why?

Because for them it's more valuable to, to keep that customer in their own walled garden at the expense of even you some of the revenue to someone else. But they are the intermediate. So that's the battle we see going on and it's of course fierce.

And I'm just wondering, it sounds a bit desperate from Amazon site to go for buy for me and other AI protocols like Rufus and stuff.

Because the picture you're painting here, that it's all about convenience and about the easiest contact from the idea in my head I want to buy something to the actual product arrives at my door and AI can shorten that process.

So but if I can use my AI browser for example that I use for everything else and send them off to buy the stuff that is in my head, why should I even use the AI that is provided by for example Amazon? Is that like a last man standing resort and will it lead to anything?

Well, I think, you know, I mean they have to, they have to make that bet. So I mean they have to assume that the experience on those AI platforms, AI based browsers isn't perfect enough for E commerce.

So they have to assume that.

And I think for the time being that's not a bad idea because we've seen others like Klarna's and others to move into marketplaces and become a marketplace. They failed because it's not as easy as it sounds to become a meaningful destination for shopping. I mean that's not, that's not trivial, right?

So I think it's, it's, it's for them, I think it makes an awful amount of sense to assume that in a specialized use case like E Commerce, them having one of the, or the biggest product assortment catalog, however you want to call this in the world for them to build a specialized experience AI empowered on top of that ocean of product makes an awful amount of sense. But you're right, assume that the AI platforms do a good job in providing all that malavi in their own browser.

It becomes not an easy pitch for a destination.

Yeah, I also think, I mean what happens to all the backend processes, right? I mean the process doesn't end by okay, I've clicked the buy box and bought the product and now it's like magically coming to my door.

I mean, what happens if you want to return the product, if you have some customer issues, customer service topics, etc. I mean, there's also like still so many open questions, right? Like who's covering that then and there?

I think like from the I agents, I would not guess that there's any support in that despite of like, where is my parcel?

But if as soon as it becomes more challenging or where you need people to ask about it or why you need the connection to the stores itself, then it becomes a bit more tricky. Right?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a very important point because they do none of this at the moment themselves. So they partner with the Shopify of this world. And of course Amazon obviously has an integrated, vertically integrated solution end to end.

Yeah, but this is definitely something that you will see now, more competition and negotiations going on because even if the OpenAI, Google, Gemini, whatever, even if all those AI layers own the direct discovery and interface with the consumer, who does the fulfillment, who does the warehousing, so you still need product, you still need fulfillment backwards and forwards. So I think marketplaces, retailers will continue to play a pivotal role on the infrastructure layer, if you want to call it like that.

So and of course for them that's a huge change because today part of a large part of their business model, the larger part of their business models rely on having customer access, including retail media, by the way. So currently, if you look at the pnl, you know, having a direct interface with the consumers for them is vital.

This will go away to some extent, but there is an infrastructure layer beneath that.

I think, you know, they have a fair chance if they're big enough and good enough to partner with those AI models to say, well, you know, I can't have it all, but you can't do the infrastructure piece yourself.

So how about not partnering with just, I don't know, Shopify, but how about partnering with Zalando or with Auto or you know, or with Amazon even for, for other models. So that I think we will absolutely see. And hence the marketplaces have a second, will play a second role.

So it's not just the intermediate role that they have, but they will also be a service partner to the, to the AI models themselves.

And then I would also assume that retail media will have a hard time because who needs it then, right? I mean, and on the other hand, data will be much more important because that's the eye where the AI gets their source Data from.

Right, well, yeah, I mean retail media, the way we define it today, relies on users, humans browsing your domain. I mean that's the premise and that will obviously not go away, but it will be a lot smaller. So that's under pressure.

But at the same time, if you think further than the premise of users coming to your site, if you think of shopping as a protocol, there is another retail media, if you will, that could be ranking as a service.

So you could think of retail media as being the solution for brands and owners of products to be visible in AI searches, for example, you know, in AI models. And somebody has to do that.

And because those platforms sit on that product data and they enhance the product data and they do semantic enhancements, contextual enhancements.

So that's kind of a new service layer in, you know, under the, let's say a retail media, whatever you want to call it, 2.0, AI First Retail Media I think will have that as a revenue stream whilst the other revenue stream will decline.

Fair point.

I absolutely think that this is coming sooner than later because after all, all the AI companies are burning money really fast. So they need revenue streams and shopping and commerce is one of the revenue streams that they are now touching upon.

And you can just figure that the next one is going to be ads in some kind of way. Some kind of way. I'm just, yeah, let's see what the customer is then thinking about. When you basically get Google Ads in.

So what, what you have now been used to as Google Ads in your AI.

But ranking as a service is something else than advertising. This, this would be a service that the retail media company, it's say Zalando, they would be offering a ranking as a service to their merchants.

So they would say, well, you pay me money and I make sure that the AI engines understand you. Yeah. So you know, we amplify visibility in AI generally speaking. So that's, that's a service.

And on top of that they can ask for money from the AI providers to say, well if I partner with you and I provide you high quality information, so signals around products and commerce, then that's worth something because remember, you know, the amount of money that pours into those models, they have to deliver best in class outcome. So I mean they are really, really fighting hard to have high quality results in their models.

So they want to partner with people that give them high quality content that could be marketplaces on commerce.

So AI SEO basically, in a way.

Yeah, I mean it's, yeah, it's like SEO as A service, but in the IA world. So it's like, you know. Yeah, yeah.

Kind of interesting concept here.

Really good point, Stefan. Let's continue this discussion after another very short break in which Ingrid tells us more about an event she's visiting in September.

Yes, indeed. On Friday, 25th September, the eBay Open is coming back to Germany.

That is after a break of two years and that is that it's a family gathering of ebay sellers. They will all come together in Berlin at the Brewdog Dog tab in Marine Park.

Expect a full ebay experience, Powerful keynotes, including a strategic outlook by eBay, Germany's CEO Zaskia Meyer. Andre Next level high insights on AI Gen Z trends, hands on masterclasses and tons of chances to network. And it's also a celebration.

Ebay turns 30 years old. So it's part conference, part festival.

I'll be there in person. And I'm very honored to serve on the jury for this year's ebay awards, which is recognizing the best sellers across Germany for.

And now I'm on for the sixth time in a row in the journey. That's a great job because I always get to meet so many interesting and inspired ebay sellers there.

So tickets are now on sale with an early bird price of €89 and later on €99 regular. So. So grab yours soon and let's meet in Berlin.

Let's turn this around, this conversation a bit on the brand side just to keep that a bit more operative in a way because let's assume that things are changing in the way that we have now described, that the front end of retailers and marketplaces become less and less relevant because a huge part of turnover is going through AI agents. But what does this mean for, for brands and manufacturers of products? How are they acting in this new e commerce world?

Well, I mean, I think the first headline is you have to match the transition. Because the reality is, you know, what we used to see as a business isn't gone. It's just there is a major change ahead of us.

But at the moment people don't feel it yet. That's why they are skeptical. And they say, boy, you must be bullshitting me. I mean, I don't see any of it. What are you talking about?

But this is the problem. I don't know if you saw the cloudflare CEO interview where he explained the data that he sees in terms of crawls to referral rates.

So, you know, websites crawl your site and they give you a referral in return. That's kind of the business model of the web, right?

So Google crawls your site and because they do so they give you a hyperlink as a result and forward traffic to you. That's the deal. And it used to be one to two. So one crawl, two referrals. That used to be the early days of the web. I crawl you once and I.

Sorry, I crawled you twice and I sent you one traffic in return. That changed for Google, that changed to one to 18. So they crawl you 18 times, they send you one visitor.

So they crawl 60,000 pages of yours and they send you one visit. So there is something coming towards you. And people say, I don't see traffic from AI, so it can't be big.

Well, yeah, it can because they called you 60,000 times and they only sent you one. So it's already there. You just don't see it that, that clearly because they're not forwarding traffic. It's a different model.

Data becomes the currency. So those models need your data. That's why they call you so often. And they have more appetite for data than the web can provide.

I mean, they've eaten the web. They ran out of web content, it's done. They absorbed the web. Everything that's available has been absorbed.

So that's why the pressure on them, on their model, the need of their models to get good signals, good, high quality data. That's why this is an opportunity for anybody who owns qualitative data to make a business.

So good content, good publishing, they don't need to let them crawl for free. They need them to pay. It's a licensed business that they need to think about. And product data the same.

If you have high quality product data, high quality consumer data, ratings, reviews, return information, these are all things they crave. So this becomes a business.

And I think that's where brands need to think along and say, do I own something that is an asset, a potential asset to the AI models, If so, that's a business. And if you can't do it yourself, well, partner with someone you know.

And of course Zalando is one who would be, you know, glad to partner, but you'll pay for this.

Or you try to partner through things like Cloudflare or that's why for Example, Shopify now excludes AI bots and agents by default because they say, well, the default is you can't get in. But if you do want to come in, let's make a deal. So if you want my data, you can pay. That's no problem. But it becomes a business model.

Data, your product data becomes a business model. It's different to what it used to be. That's why people struggle with that. And again, I'm not arrogant at all. You know, I'm in it as well.

I'm scratching my forehead every day. So it's easy to get a bit confused here.

Yeah, that's an interesting point. I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, pay for your AI bot to access your site.

But still, you know, if you're talking about data, and let's put that down to a product, I don't know, if I sell a watch, then I know how big it is and how fast it goes and how reliable it is and how deep I can dive with it. And all these, these data points, that's what a product needs in a way.

But even, especially if it's a, it's a luxury brand, then they would say what a product is, is. I don't know, it's. It's brand, it's, it's wealth, it's freedom, it's choice, it's whatever. So where does brand have a place in all of this?

So emotion that is connected to a product, product that.

And by the way people have been talking, telling us over the last five to 10 years that you need these kinds of things attached to your product if you want to differentiate it from your Chinese competition, for example.

Yeah, I think when you as a brand think about this, I mean, I would start with imagining two different audiences. So you have your humans and people know how this more or less how this game works. But now you have a second audience, and that's the AI agent.

So you need to get your head around who is this? So you know, how does an AI agent, in quotation marks think?

So what, what are the sources that an AI agent refers to to make a judgment call on your product, your brand, whatever it may be?

And when you start to think in, in, in, in like an audience, AI agents as an audience, audience, you know, you will start to find ways and understand, by the way, it's still evolving, right? It's, it's like humans evolve as well. Where do they research? How do they make purchasing? That's the same with AI, AI agents.

And I don't know if you, you read about it.

But for example, I think it's chatgpt that for example, listens very much or highly to the Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung and their reviews on running shoes. Shoes. So when you sell it, when you, when you, when you're selling running shoes, that's a great place to be.

You know, I wonder how that happens.

I don't know that because most likely because you know, the efforts set is, is a, is a, is a well renowned, I don't know, you know, credible publishing source. Great.

So if they do a review on running shoes and they test running shoes most, maybe it's nothing more complicated than that, then we trust that this is also trustworthy. And then those, those AI bots, they take that information and they treat it as a strong signal.

So when you try to hack in quotation marks the system well make sure that you're tested and you're good. The problem is people don't have good products and therefore they're not well tested.

That's why I said on the K5, gone are the days of cheap arbitrage. You need to have something genuinely good because AI will make it a lot more difficult for you to fool around.

If you have shitty shoes, you will not be featured in those reviews and if you are, you will be awful in the review in that test.

So you know, when you think about it that way and you try to be where people, where AI bots try to understand your brand or your product, this is where you need to be. A source of trustworthy information. Sounds a bit abstract. Isn't, isn't. It's just not a cookie cutter. Here is your 10 pages SEO hack.

It is not as trivial as this, but it's still, it's a data play and you need to be featured in trustworthy sources and you need to be talked about. Well, because AI absorbs everything and tries to understand what's a great signal.

And if in a trust, in a highly credible source, if you're well discussed and people talk about your brand very positively, positively, chances are high that AI search results will, will feature you accordingly.

Okay, wow. That. To sum that up, everything changes. Well, yeah, but it's good as always, like everything.

Yeah, but in this case it's, it's like really everything. It's just the contact between the brand and the customer, between the retailer and the customer. It's the way that, that products are being found.

It's the way that products are being advertised. It's new relationships between the, the service providers along the the commerce chain are going to change because of that.

So, yeah, everything changes. Great times to be alive.

Yeah, but it was boring the last 15 years, wasn't it?

In a way. In a way that's true.

Yeah.

No, it's not boring in the next year.

That's true.

Spin the wheel faster. Yeah.

Great. Okay, Stefan, this brings us to the end of our time for today, but thank you very much.

I have a feeling that we could do this episode all over again in, I don't know, September or October and we're going to have all new things to talk about.

Absolutely.

Yeah. But thank you very much for your insight.

You're welcome. My pleasure.

Yeah, that was our first summer deep dive, I would say. So thank you, Stefan, for having these insights and sharing it.

We would love to tune you in next time for our second one when we discuss the impact of social commerce, especially TikTok shop on today's Marketplace business together with Christina Mertens. And Stefan, I saw that you recently also did this with her, right?

Absolutely. I was invited, I had the honor to be the host of their 100th episode of their own podcast. So, yeah, that was good stuff.

That's good stuff. Yeah, yeah, definitely listen into that. It's in German though, but if you understand, to have a listen.

It's always very fun to have a listen to Christina and to Stefan as well in both of the podcasts. So thank you for today and yeah, tune in next time. Bye bye.

Thank you. Bye bye.

Bye bye.

You listen to let's Talk Marketplace, the.

Marketplace podcast with Ingrid Lommer and Baneri.